If I want to eventually work in a specific region of the US, such as in Cali, would it be preferable to go to Med school and residency in that region? Does the medical school I go to help determine where I will do residency? Would the residency location determine where i eventually practice?
Med school and residency determine where I work?
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Unless you go to a top-tier medical school (a la Ivy or Stanford), where you match in residency depends on how well you do in med school. If you do well in med school, you have a higher probability of matching where you want to go. After residency, everywhere is also fair game, with more prestigious residency programs tending to have more generous job opportunities. There is probably somewhat of a correlation between residency location and where you finally end up working, but not a causation.
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Agree with the prior poster. You can still work in Cali regardless of where you do med school or residency. I would suggest that if you are applying to residency and have no connections with california then going to a med school outside of California is going to make it that much harder to convince the PDs you are sincere about your interest in that state. And obviously local partnerships are going to recruit most heavily toward the local residents at the hospitals they have privileges at, so it will be a bit easier to make those job connections if you are local for residency. So no, you aren't locked into a region of practice based on either med school or residency. But there is probably some correlation, as the prior poster suggested, of folks who do residency in state X staying in state X (whether it's a self selecting thing, or a recruiting thing is dependent on the individual), and there is some marginal advantage in staying on for residency in the state where you did med school, because it's less "suspicious" when someone in MI says they want to live in CA vs someone already in CA and has roots there. Remember that PDs like to be able to not go deep in their match lists, so they want people who want them, to some degree, and it's hard for them to guess if an out of stater actually wants them or is simply applying to programs in a multitude of states and seeing what shakes out.
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Yes to both questions. Numbers show that around 75% of doctors practice in the state or region of their med-school and residency.
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See the prior posters discussion of correlation vs causation, which I think is seriously at work here, and probably accounts for a HUGE chunk of your 75%. There is nothing that prevents you from changing locales. But many people like to stay local. You will see many people from your med school deciding to stay on in the same geographic area. And you will see many people at most med schools who went to college in that same geographic area. You don't see too many people who went to college in Boston, med school in Florida, then residency in California and to a job in Tennesee. It's not that it can't happen, it's just that it doesn't. You have to realize that the older you get, the more ties to geography you will have. Lots of people come out of med school and residency married, engaged or seriously involved with someone with geographic ties. Or lots of people who grew up in X state and went to X state school want to stay on in X state. Again, that doesn't mean they'd have much difficulty finding a job in state Y, just that they would never dream of it. Given that, I think saying the answer is "yes" is misleading. Yes most people probably will stay put. But no, they don't have to.
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No one has to stay in the area of their residency, of course. And we tell senior residents to look at all available offers... but the numbers are there.
I would think that it's similar for those with newly minted law degrees. More often than not, one graduates from law school and then takes the bar exam in the same state, no?
I would think that it's similar for those with newly minted law degrees. More often than not, one graduates from law school and then takes the bar exam in the same state, no?
